The story of the Yale Puppeteers is told in Forman Brown's book Punch's
Progress (1936). This partnership began in 1923 at the University of Michigan,
continuing at Yale University. In 1932 the company performed for
a brief season in their own puppet theatre in Manhattan's east forties.
In 1933 they did a puppet sequence in the film "I Am Suzanne". In 1936-1938
they performed in repertory at the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel and the Cosmopolitan
Club in New York. On July 10, 1941, they opened their permanent Turnabout
Theatre in Los Angeles, where their marionettes performed satirical adult
musicals until 1960. The Turnabout Theatre featured a marionette stage
at one end and a live stage at the other. The seats were salvaged from
old street cars. During the intermission following the marionette performance,
the seatbacks were flipped for the audience to watch the live review at
the other end. Forman Brown was the writer for the company and Harry Burnett
the designer. In the nineteen twenties their theatre on Olvera Street in
Los Angeles, attracted stars such as Greta Garbo, Marie Dressler, Douglas
Fairbanks, and even Albert Einstein. The building where the theatre was
located still stands and is now an antique store. The celebrity wall where
Hollywood stars and other notables signed their names, apparently is still
there covered over by drywall.

Harry Burnett, Forman Brown, and Richard Brandon (lt. to rt.)

Inspiration for the Turnabout Theater goes back to Harry Burnett's
days at the University of Michigan in the twenties when he discovered puppet
theater. This he developed more fully as a graduate student at Yale University.
Soon he, Brandon and Brown were touring the country with their puppet troupe
and became known as The Yale Puppeteers. Landing in Los Angeles in 1929,
the trio helped open Olvera Street with their Teatro Torito. Moving on
to New York theater and additional touring, the puppeteers returned to
Los Angeles in 1941 to open Turnabout Theatre at 716 North La Cienega
Boulevard. Following its close in 1956 they performed briefly in San Francisco
and San Diego and then retired to Turnabout House, their Hollywood residence.
From this base they remained active for many years in various projects
and gave performances for their friends.

Turnabout Theater

Harry Burnett and is puppets

Burnett frequently designed portrait puppets for leading actors and
other public figures, who would then visit the theater with their friends
to see themselves in marionette form.

Gary Cooper with Burnett's Puppet

Turnabout Theater - Elsa Lanchester

From 1941 to 1951, Elsa Lanchester, whose character creations delighted
Los Angeles audiences for ten years, performed a sort of music hall/cabaret
act as part of the show at the Turnabout Theater in Hollywood. Songs written
for her by Forman Brown include "Catalogue Woman", "It's Nice to See You're
Back" and "When a Lady Has a Piazza". For a number of years the Turnabouters
also produced "Tommy Turnabout's Circus", a program for children, first
at Farmers Market and later at Turnabout Theatre.

Many awards were presented to them, including a giant telegram on their
50th anniversary by the Los Angeles Guild of Puppetry and a Certificate
of Commendation by the City of Los Angeles "For all the happiness they've
brought Los Angeles". Both Harry Burnett and Forman Brown are alive in
their 90's.